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THE PERSONALITY OF THE WRITER
/The Short-story is more than form and technique. Personality a factor in all literature. How and why. Certogn qualities common to story-tellers: Ability to grasp facts; Imaginative insight; Sympathy. Lack of feeling in Maupassant. Personality may differ widely. Determines choice of subjects and attitude toward subjects. Compare Hawthorne, Kipling, Henry James, Poe. Dangers of imitation. Joy and growth in and through the Short-story. Present tendency toward commercialization a danger Thus far we have treated the Short-story as a form, as a technique. Yet one should never lose sight of the fact that technique alone cannot make an admirable story. Faultless technique is necessary in the Short-story as in the sonnet, but it is not the final test of worth. We praise a musician's technique, yet we rightly enjoy the performance only when it shows warmth of feeling. The Short story form has become common; it greets us on every side. Story-writers who have mistaken technical skill for true art have sprung up like weeds in a meadow. The result is that people are well-nigh sated with inferior work. If in the last half dozen years the Short-story has seemed to degenerate, if it has come to be regarded as more or less of a dissipation by people who enjoy strenuous thinking, it is small wonder. People who have not thought keenly and felt sincerely can imitate a form; they cannot make literature. If as much prominence were given to cheap, imitation poetry whose only virtue is a close adherence to a strict metre, a definite rhyme-scheme, and a well regulated rhythm, as there is given to the same sort of Short-story, we should gain a highly inadequate and absurd idea of the real value and beauty of poetry. There is a Short-story which is more than form; one which we care to remember as we do a good poem. We read it again and again. It, too, has a rigid' form, but it has what technique can never give, a personal element. It is written in emotional fervor by those who have tasted life in some of its sweetness and bitterness, and who are ready to speak their vision out of a full heart. All writing, except the purely scientific, is an expression of the personality of him who writes it. Facts are the same in their essence to Everyone. The plain statement of fact is like absolute zero. It is entirely devoid of warmth; it has no fringe of feeling. So soon, however, as it ceases to stand by itself in space and begins to come into relation to people, it becomes interesting. It impresses us in some way. We feel certain things about it. It is then that our individuality enters. No two of us are alike, and no two of us will have exactly the same feelings about a given fact. Realizing this divergence of feeling, we are anxious to compare and share our experiences. In the narrow world about us, in the circle of our friends, this is easily accomplished. We smell a bunch of lilacs, then hand it to our friend. We watch a beautiful sunset, and we call others to see it, that they may share our joy. We stand on a hill-top in the fall of the year, and we point out one object after another: the gum-trees turned dark red, the sun shining on the bare poplars, the mingled yellow and green and russet of the maples. All these objects we name because we are unwilling that another should miss their beauty. Even then, very often, someone is unsatisfied, and in the attempt to make realization more vivid, utters some „platitude. He says that the hill looks like a tapestry or a veiled Persian silk. He is trying to express himself. Only in an exceedingly limited way can we thus bring anyone into actual contact with that which we feel as beautiful or, interesting. That which stirs our, feeling and prompts our instinct for self-expression may be largely or wholly beyond the sphere of the senses. It may be an experience, spiritual in its nature; a touch of pity for misfortune; a joy in the well-won victory of a noble aspiration; a bitter indignation for some deed of shame; a thrill at some heroic act. We feel as before the same impulse to express ourselves. Voice and gesture do not now avail. Writing comes in. Paper and ink become the medium for our vision. So literature is born, when such experience and such desire come to a great soul. It follows that he who writes has a real vision to impart, and that he is not writing merely for effect. "To invoke ideas with words is a much more difficult experience than the reverse process, " says John Burroughs. ' It is not only more difficult, but more fruitless. We write that another may share our thrill; and unless we have genuinely felt it, we cannot impart it. Literature always bears the impress of personality; a man writes himself into his work. If he has no message, he delivers none; if he has seen beauty in the world, it is beauty that he shows us; if he has seen pain, and cruelty, and ugliness, and pettiness, he will represent these; if he understands only facts, he will give us facts. It is just as true that one man sees and feels what another may pass by. What seems dull commonplace to one, may be music to another. "Two men have the same thoughts; they use about the same words in expressing them; yet with one the product is real literature, with the other it is a platitude. " The difference is in the personality of the men. Behind the worthy novel, the great poem, the powerful Short-story, there is a sincere personality revealing itself in literary form. The world is interested in personality. It is not so much the facts that a man sees that interest us; it is the facts become a part of the man himself. Beauty comes to Everyone differently, for each infuses something of his own life into what he sees. Some more than others have this power of revealing themselves. The friends of Phillips Brooks are said to have been satisfied simply to sit in his study and watch him work. Ordinarily, however, we expect to listen to men as they talk, or to read what they write, and thus to come to see through their eyes, to touch their spirits, to feel the irradiation of their personalities. All literature demands personality as a basis. Yet he who would write stories must have certain qualities specially developed. First of all, the good story-teller has the intellectual ability of grasping facts, — facts of all sorts — scientific facts, narrative facts, imaginative facts, historical facts, just plain facts. He sees everything around him. He knows the feel of the winds, the tones of the foliage, the effects of the fogs, the movements of the butterflies, the chirping of the crickets. He knows people; he studies their appearance, their manners, their habits. He needs to know how they talk to their dogs and how they look when they are doing a washing. No knowledge, however trivial, is to be scorned by the story-writer. He observes details, the little facts; yet he does not let the more important escape him. We are constantly astonished at the minute and diversified knowledge which Kipling displays. We have reason to believe that this information did not come to him unsought. He was always questioning, watching, experiencing. 0. Henry has told us with what painstaking he gathered his facts. He never met anyone, he said, from whom in the course of a conversation, he could not gain some valuable information. Maupassant was an indefatigable observer, as his stories testify. He sought not only the facts themselves, but he sought to penetrate to their essential nature, — to see what differentiated them from other like facts. In his oft-quoted Introduction to Pierre et Jean, he says: "In . everything there is still some spot unexplored, because we are accustomed to look at things only with the recollection of what others before us have thought of the subject we are contemplating. The smallest object contains something unknown. Let us find it. In order to describe a fire that flames, and a tree on the plain, we must keep looking at that flame and that tree, until to our eyes they no longer resemble any other tree, any other fire. " It is this minute and careful observation which, so far as he is able, every Short-story writer must cultivate. Along with a knowledge of facts, the story-teller has the imaginative ability of realizing what he has not personally experienced. He is called upon to write many things which have not been in his own narrow life. Yet through his imagination he is able to correlate his facts, and make his picture. What he reads, what he hears told, these he sees as if they were passing before him. Thus he is able to sort out the congruous from the incongruous, to distinguish the natural from the unnatural, to know when passion is fitting, and when coolness. He is abre to enter into the life of those he depicts, to appreciate their circumstances, to understand their motives, — even when these things would not be his own. He needs to be able to put himself temporarily in the place of his character, to think his thoughts, to do his deeds. How understandingly Stevenson shows us Markheim. He entered imaginatively into the situation. Poe had perfect imaginative insight into the character of Montresor. From beginning to end, the story shows Poe's ability to penetrate into the deep-seated vindictive ness of the man. Not that it possesses this quality conspicuously above other portions of the story, but as an illustration, let us look at this passage: "Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of its fellows that lay upon the mould. 'Drink, ' I said, presenting him the wine. "He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me familiarly, while his bells jingled. I drink, ' he said, 'to the buried that repose around us. ' "And Ito your long life?" In a flash, Montresor has realized the unwitting appropriateness of Fortunato's toast in the cool consciousness that he is already drinking to the buried, though living, Fortunato, he answers, "And I to your long life. " So thoroughly had Poe imagined situation and character that he could unerringly represent Montresor in this moment of vindictive foresight. It is hard to surpass in the representing of utter fiendishness this gloating over the long hours of living death soon to overtake the victim. Along with his imaginative insight — an intellectual quality — the story-writer needs sympathy, which is emotional in nature. He need not represent that which is unbeautiful as beautiful, or that which is not good as good. Sympathy is not partisanship. It is the, ability to feel that which one has already realized of a situation intellectually. Steven son had imaginative insight, but along with it sympathy. How fully Kipling caught the spirit of Miss Florence, and how sympathetically he has portrayed it. How unreservedly Mr. Stimson has let himself feel the love, the despair, the hope of Mrs. Knollys. One may coldly enumerate the details, the events of such stories, but the stories will never live unless one puts life into them. Life is always warm; a cold relation of life can only chill. Stories are written not in the mood of scientific analysis, but of lively enthusiasm. Because Guy de Maupassant was unwilling to influence his readers, he adopted the dispassionate attitude. He robbed his stories of much that might have made them real. Perfect in form, they yet seem more the productions of a machine than the warm creations of a man's imagination. His people are interesting. He describes them as he would have described a tree or a stone. We admire his grasp of facts, his ability to make an imaginative situation, but his stories live only objectively for us. We watch Madame Loisel, we are sorry for her sufferings, we appreciate the irony of the result; but we never suffer with her. The writer himself was a spectator, and we, too, are but onlookers at a struggle. Observation has supplanted realization. The story is a fact but not an experience. Mr. Esenwein says excellently: "Maupassant was also a literalist, and this native trait served to render his realism colder and more unsympathetic. By this I mean that to him two and three always summed up five — his temperament would not allow for the unseen, imponderable force of spiritual things; and even when he mentions the spiritual, it is with a sort of tolerant unbelief which scorns to deny the superstitious solace of women, weaklings and zealots. " 1Hence Maupassant, consummate master of form and Short-story technique though he is, has failed to reach and control the hearts of men. 2 Although having certain common qualities, the personalities of story-tellers vary widely. This difference naturally shows itself in the kind of story that each one can write best. One may have special ability in treating the humorous. For another, the pathetic may be the imaginative stimulus. Some persons may write of the occult with greater natural zest than they could of the simple and plain. As the personality of the writer varies, so varies the type of story that he can most effectively produce. This divergence affects not only one's choice of 1Short-story Masterpieces: French. Edited by J. B. Esenwein, pp. 54-5. 'That he was conscious at times of this withering weakness in his own personality appears pitifully in a letter of his to Marie Bashkirtseff: "Everything in life is almost alike to me, men, women, events. This is my true confession of faith, and I may add what you may not believe, which is that I do not care any more for myself than I do for the rest. All is divided into ennui, comedy, and misery. I am indifferent to everything. I pass two-thirds of my time in being terribly bored. I pass the third portion in writing sentences which I sell _. . :. regretting that I have to ply this abomi . subjects, but one's attitude toward them. What seems humor as told by one often falls flat when related by another. Whether one's attitude is playful or serious is determined by the nature of the writer. Mr. Aldrich might have treated Marjorie Daw seriously, but for him the whimsical was the natural manner. How different are Hawthorne, and Kipling, and Henry James, and Poe, in their stories! Hawthorne was always trying to work out the spiritual relations of things. He was a moral analyst. Kipling seems to love life in all its aspects. His is a buoyant nature, always finding novelty, always searching for that which is interesting. He is not subtle. He accepts the world as he finds it; and he finds it a place full of love and hatred, full of suffering and woe, yet withal full of exuberant life. Henry James is the intellectual analyst, eager to work out all problems rationally. He finds the world an interesting phenomenon. He loves it as a mechanic loves his engine. He would adjust the machinery, tighten a bolt, and oil a bearing. Poe, on the other hand, entered into life with a passion, 7— but a morbid passion. All beauty was for him poisoned with decay. ' Imagine Hawthorne trying to write a story with the single impression of They. I "Passionately fond of beauty, he conceived the melancholy idea that beauty and grace are interesting only in their overthrow. 'I have imbibed, ' he says, 'the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. ' And his stories have the romantic interest of glimpses of splendid ruins. " Albright, The Shortstory, He would have made it uncanny. It would have made its reader feel as if he were trespassing on another realm. Imagine Kipling writingThe Madonna of the Future. Instead of emphasizing Mr. Theobald's artistic idealism, Kipling would have insisted on the heart-break of the man's failure. How different, too, were the touches of Poe and Hawthorne. It is the personality of the individual men which makes the difference in their stories. He who writes stories knows his own personality. He has found by experience the kind of stories which he can write best. He feels it his 'duty to express his own personality and not to write stories or to use a style absolutely foreign to his nature. He need have no fear of expressing himself, for the world may be waiting, unconsciously, for just what he has to say in the way that he chooses to say it. By trying to imitate another's stories or another's style, he loses his own originality, which is nothing more or less than the genuine reflection of his personality. ' He never can do so well as can the one he is trying to imitate. Moreover, he can never assimilate another's personality. If he try, "And that virtue of originality that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think (there is nothing new), it is only genuineness;it alldepends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed to the thick, hot, unrefreshing drainage from other men's meadows. " Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. ii, sec. ii, chap. III, p. 253, Library Edition. he will be neither himself nor the other person; he will be in a limbo of his own from which only a long penitence and the reclaiming of his own proper self can ever release him. He may, as did Stevenson for awhile, play the sedulous ape to many masters, but in the end his Short-stories will be valuable only in proportion as they express his own personality. When one takes personality as well as form into account, the great Short-story rises to something of the dignity of the poem. In studying it appreciatively, still more in writing it, one is forced not only to the realization of a careful literary form, but also to the development — to a greater or less extent — of those same qualities of intellectual grasp, of imaginative power, and of sympathetic insight which belong to the great story-teller. One may say also of the Short-story: "Of course the suggestiveness of any work — poem, picture, novel, essay — depends largely upon what we bring to it; whether we bring a kindred spirit or an alien one, a full mind or an empty one, an alert sense or a dull one. If you have been there, so to speak, if you have passed through the experience described, if you have known the people portrayed, if you have thought, or tried to think, the thoughts the author exploits, the work will have a deeper meaning to you than to one who is a stranger to these things. . . . It is the deep hollows and passes of the mountains that give back your voice in prolonged reverberations. The tides are in the sea, not in the lakes and ponds. Words of deep import do not mean much to a child. The world of books is under the same law as these things. What any given work yields us depends largely upon what we bring to it. "' Moreover, in writing, a man is led to explore his own personality. He is seeing the world through his own eyes. Things take on fresh luster because they are made new to him. He is no longer the slave of other men's vision. He is himself. As Mr. Eastman says, inEnjoyment of Poetry: "This is the priesthood of art — not to bestow upon the universe a new aspect, but upon the beholder a new enthusiasm. " We read a great Short-story as we do a great poem, — not to feel a moment's yearning, the call of something which can never distinctly reach us; we read it because it fills us with a new enthusiasm for living. It makes us wish to endure, and love, and hate; to hope, aspire, and work; to fill our youth with joyous labor, and to grow old still in the joy of living. We wish to go forth with the tingling of battle in our nerves. We should soon revert to the humdrum, to think that every day is like every other day, to think that every star is like every other star, to let our thoughts run ever around in the same track, to carry out the details of life as if we were machines, were there not always before us stimulation to new achievement, were our eyes not opened by our catching now and then a glimpse of another's vision. All true art has this beneficent effect; one cannot indeed claim it for the Shortstory alone. Yet the Short-story may have its share in keeping the echo of true aspirations ringing through men's souls. The great Short-story does not die when it is read. It has awakened thoughts which rouse men from their drowsiness, nor do they ever go back into quite their old lethargy. They feel, new impulse to experience, to fresh resolve. The lesser Shortstory may have swept our emotion an hour, and be gone as the wind from the treetops; but the great Short-story takes its place in art along with great poetry, great music, great painting. The present commercialization of the Short-story is working against this development and revelation of personality. "Give the public what it demands" is the saying, — irrespective of whether that is what a writer wishes to produce or can produce best, if he but take the time. To be true to oneself is a difficult task, a high calling: it takes time, and courage, and devotion to an ideal. Many people can grind out a best seller for some cheap periodical; few are willing to pay the price that produces aMrs. Knollys, or a They. It is to be regretted, too, that many books treating of the Short-story are encouraging this commercial spirit. Let us rather enter our protest in the name of true art. Let us urge anew upon Everyone who would enter the Short-story field to come to it as to high art, with a message: to be true to the highest, to live by the gospel of the best. To produce a Shortstory in this way may take a lifetime. Yet the true writer knows how . . . to bide his time And can his fame abide, Still patient in his simple faith sublime, Till the wise years decide. Great captains with their guns and drums Disturb our judgment for the hour, But at last silence comes, ' and the verdict of ages. category:authorship